Excerpts from Ivana Hruba's novels and short stories

Love

Over there – it’s the Milky Way. If you squint, it looks like a rainbow.

Billy squints. It looks like a veil. See?

I don’t see but I keep looking.

— — —

Billy
was wrong. It wasn’t a rainbow or a veil. It was grief biding its time,
waiting for death to be ushered in to tell us that our childhood was
over. But we chose not to see. We lay in the grass blissfully happy,
looking at the stars twinkling up there like diamonds.

If you could be anything, what would you be?

I’d be rich.

I meant if you could be something other than human.

I’d be a dolphin.

I’d be a bird.

Okay, me too.

What kind of bird?

Billy says nothing. He lies still, chewing a blade of grass. He might be thinking about kissing me.

I’d be a humming bird, I say.

Billy’s eyes are closing. He might be changing his mind. I can’t let that happen. I feel so happy I could fly. Seriously fly.

— — —

I
got home just before dawn. I crawled through the window and fell
straight into my bed. The mattress squeaked. I listened for a moment to
see if I’d woken up Old Shawn but all I heard were his snores coming
from Mum’s room. I could just see him, curled up under the blankets like
a big old shaggy bear, with the dog at the foot of the bed, looking
like a bear cub. The thought of those two sharing a bed made me smile.
Saffron had never shown the least sign of affection to any of Mum’s
boyfriends until Old Shawn came along.

Old Shawn was different from
the beginning. He was clean and well-spoken. He didn’t chew a gum. He
wore a tie and a suit, and had money. Lots. He also had a useless foot, a
funny-looking withered thing hanging off his leg like some kind of a
spent cocoon. I remember looking at it, feeling weird about it, the
first time we met, at the pub where Mum worked, where we had dinner,
just him, Mum and me. Mum was nervous; she had warned me that Old Shawn
was quite unlike any man she’d ever known. He was a man intent on doing
the right thing, and she was quite anxious that I should like him.

So
there he was, Old Shawn, in his Sunday best, sitting at the table,
waiting to make my acquaintance. He got up when we entered and pulled
Mum’s chair out for her. She kissed him on the cheek before she sat
down. He blushed. Mum laughed and took his hand, held it in her own at
the table. Old Shawn kept blushing. I sat there looking at them, feeling
a little weird. Mum and Old Shawn made an odd couple. Mum was young and
pretty and he old and ugly and a cripple to boot. Of course, when I got
to know the old man, none of it mattered because he was so kind.

The
dinner went well. Old Shawn won me over with his quiet ways; he didn’t
ask stupid questions about me and of me, and I sensed he was a man happy
to let our relationship grow in whichever direction I chose. I felt
that I could trust him. I enjoyed the evening and when we parted I knew
we were onto a good thing.

From day one it was clear that Old Shawn
loved Mum to bits, and this never changed even after he moved in. He was
nice to me, very polite and a little awkward, always making sure I had
nothing to complain about, and never coming between me and Mum when we
argued. He bought us whatever we wanted and took us on trips, and
generally did everything he could to make Mum fall in love with him. It
goes without saying that he paid for everything, bills and the rent and
Mum’s car registration. Despite this, I don’t think Mum was ever in love
with him. She liked him a lot, maybe even loved him but she was never
wild about him, not like she was about Danny when Danny was her man. She
never said anything but I knew.

So, Old Shawn moved in after a
little while of family day trips and Sunday night dinners. We got to
know each other pretty quickly as we spent quite a bit of time together
when Mum was at work. She kept her job even though Old Shawn asked her
to give it up. Mum told him she liked the work and her independence. Old
Shawn never mentioned it again.

Old Shawn and I got on well. As time
went by, I got used his being awkward around me and began to like it,
and we had a good time together. We played board games and watched
movies, and went out with Saffron to the woods, and sometimes we went
out for ice-cream. Sometimes, Old Shawn looked like he wanted to drop in
on Mum at work to say hello but I discouraged him; I knew Mum would
take it badly. She needed her space, from me, from him, from the
routine. Besides, they didn’t like family members hanging about at the
pub. So I discouraged those visits.

Old Shawn and I talked about a
lot of things together. I found out he used to have a job. He worked on a
construction site where the building they were working on collapsed one
day and everybody except Old Shawn died. Old Shawn crawled out of the
rubble, badly injured, with his foot broken. So he got a big payout from
the company, but he had to promise them to keep quiet about the
incident and sign a confidentiality agreement. Old Shawn talked about it
sometimes and drank a bit of brandy to make him forget all his mates
who died.

Anyway, our family life was pretty good with Old Shawn in
charge of everything and the money on tap. Mum certainly was much calmer
and happier in a very unhappy sort of way. I once caught her looking at
Danny’s picture that she kept in a locked drawer in her bedroom. Mum
was crying. I felt sorry for her but wished with all my heart that she
would forget Danny because he had been such a disaster. The man was
nothing but a loser who took advantage of Mum’s trusting nature and
repaid her with heartache. He trashed our house and took off with some
girl the same day. Because of him Mum got into debt and ended up with
Old Shawn. I hated Danny for what he did to us; even when I saw Mum
crying over his picture, I still wished him dead.

Soon after Old
Shawn moved in, he asked Mum to marry him. She said no and he asked her
again, and when again she said no he asked her to at least stop working
at the pub. That’s when Mum told him she went to work to keep up her
skills. Of course, this was a lie and an excuse to keep hanging out at
the pub. Mum was simply hoping Danny would one day show up there to play
his stupid trumpet. Needless to say she was being foolish; Danny left
on bad terms and owed money all over the place, but Mum was a romantic
at heart.

After Mum rejected Old Shawn I got a bit worried he might
leave, but he didn’t. Even moved back into Mum’s bedroom after two days
of sleeping on the couch. Our life went on as before. Mum worked nights
as much as she liked, and Old Shawn said no more about it. He bought her
a new car and Mum was very happy and kind to everybody, and this went
on for so long that I was lulled into thinking we were destined to live
happily for ever.

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The Dead Husbands Club

'By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the
ground, for out of it you were taken and to dust you shall return.
Amen.’ Father Smogg makes the sign of the cross over the coffin and
throws a handful of dust into the grave. The service is over.
The
congregation gathered here to pay respects to the recently deceased
looks relieved. Thanks God this was short, Lucinda reads in the
mourners’ faces. They’re filing past her, shaking her hand, telling her
how sorry they are, wishing her luck, then quietly leaving with a kind
word or two about her husband she’s sure nobody really means. Soon only
the front row, the neighbours and the business associates who owed the
dearly departed money, are left. There’s a wake to go to.

Chapter 1

The
death of Lucinda’s husband brought joy into Lucinda’s life. She herself
would later say that Tony’s demise was the beginning of the life she
was meant to have, the life she had always secretly wanted but never
told anyone about ‘cause there was no point in bringing it up while she
was married to Tony. Tony himself would not have disputed her claim, had
it ever been made, ‘cause essentially, Lucinda’s opinions didn’t
matter. At the time of his death, Lucinda’s feelings, desires, needs and
wants were the furthest thing on his mind as Lucinda had long ceased to
interest him in any tangible, material way; after fifteen years of
marriage he simply viewed her as a handy household pet, well trained and
with predictable responses, and he’d have been much surprised to know
that Lucinda was unhappy in their relationship. The idea to ask her had
never even entered his mind.
Tony was a man of simple desires. Set in
his ways, he saw his life as a chain of meticulously planned and well
executed orderly events designed to keep him happy. In this scheme of
things, his marriage was nothing but a well-oiled cog in the clockwork.
Tony’s
idea of marriage was straight forward. An old-fashioned kind of
husband, Tony expected an obedient wife, a home-cooked meal and a clean
house. He worked hard for what he got, Tony did, and what he got he
deserved — a clean house, a home-cooked meal and an obedient wife. Apart
from this, his one desire was to be left alone on the weekends.
Tony’s
weekends were spent watching footy. Lucindaah! Tony would shout from
the living room where he lay on the couch cracking nuts. Bring me a
beer, will you? And Lucinda jumped to it ‘cause that’s how it was from
the day they got married to the day Tony died.
The day Tony died was a
Sunday. Traditionally, Sunday in Tony’s household was a day of rest.
For Tony, who spent it on the couch in the same manner he spent his
Saturday — watching footy. For Lucinda, Sunday traditionally was a busy
and aggravating day ‘cause there were Tony’s shirts to iron and his
favourite dinner to cook — a tedious, drawn out affair with piles of
food made just the way Tony liked it and starring homemade sausages,
which Tony insisted Lucinda cook from scratch.
The day Tony carked it was no different, for either of them.
‘Lucindaah!’ Tony shouted from the living room where he lay on the couch cracking nuts. ‘Bring me a beer, will you?’
In
the kitchen, Lucinda, emitting a sigh, rolled her eyes heavenwards.
Elbows deep in sausage meat, she’s busy, busy kneading these stinking
sausages Tony insists they have every Sunday.
‘Lucindaah!’ shouts Tony. There’s an intensity to his tone, this time. ‘The beer! NOW!’
Lucinda
closes her eyes briefly, gathering herself, gathering her determination
to grin and bear it for the good of the afternoon, herself, Tony and
their wretched existence together, and all these Sundays she has endured
for so long. Only a few hours and it’ll be over, she tells herself;
only the footy, the dinner and the evening movie to get through, she
thinks projecting herself into the future, into Monday, when she will be
alone, cleaning the house and making a home-cooked meal on her own in
the welcome, luxurious peace and quiet of Tony’s absence.
Next door,
in the living room where the curtains are drawn against the afternoon
sun, Tony’s lying on the couch, watching footy on television and
precariously balancing a bowl of peanuts on his beer gut. It isn’t an
easy task; Tony’s bulging belly button is seriously in the way and may
soon cause the bowl to topple and the peanuts to spill. So Tony’s being
careful; he wouldn’t want to have Lucinda sweeping up the mess in the
middle of the first half, just as it’s getting exciting. So he’s being
careful, hardly daring to breathe, waiting for his beer to arrive. The
game goes into a commercial, a beer ad of all things, which reminds him.
‘What are you doing in there, woman?’ Tony shouts, grabbing onto
the bowl of peanuts just in time. His massive belly button, obscenely
huge and almost translucent but for the few grey hairs — yeah, Tony’s
getting on — sprouting there on the sides and down his belly, moves,
propelling the bowl upwards and to the side. So Tony catches it and puts
the bowl down on the coffee table. He sinks back into the couch, and
fumes, steaming with anger and vapor ‘cause he is annoyed and ‘cause it
is hot in the room.
Tony’s sweating like a hog though he’s not
wearing much, just a pair of old Y-fronts which, due to their age and
Tony’s reclining pose, are tightly drawn over his tiny small penis but
sagging under his great big ass, right under the stain that just won’t
go, no matter what Lucinda does with it in the wash. She’s long wanted
to replace these unsightly undergarments but Tony won’t have it, is
sentimental about them ‘cause they’re his favourite undies to watch
footy in, so what’s your problem, woman? asks Tony whenever this topic
arises between them, which is often, nearly every time it’s hot. Even
today, though Lucinda has said nothing, Tony knows she’s thinking about
his underpants ‘cause she’s got that grimace on, those pinched nostrils,
which disapprove of him. And the beer is still nowhere to be seen.
Tony
gets up, determined to get some answers. She’d better have a good
excuse, fumes Tony, ambling towards the kitchen. Maybe she’s dead. She’s
awfully quiet in there… thinks Tony, calculating the chances in all
seriousness ‘cause it’s really the only thing that would go some way
towards explaining why his beer has not arrived.
The kitchen door is
ajar. He gives it a shove with his foot and pokes his head tentatively
into the interior, expecting to see a calamity of some kind. But nothing
out of the ordinary has happened in the kitchen; Lucinda’s carrying on
as she always does on Sundays, making sausages.
She has a nerve, Tony
thinks, flaring his nostrils into his own disapproving grimace. He
could give her a piece of his mind, he could, but he’s determined to
rise above it this time ‘cause it’s Sunday and he doesn’t want to spoil
his mood; after all, it’s his favourite day — the footy’s on, he’s
wearing his favourite undies and he’s gonna have those yummy sausages
for dinner. Just thinking about the sausages makes him happy; Tony’s
tension is easing and he’s taking a deep breath to savour the kitchen
aroma.
To Tony, the sausage meat Lucinda’s making smells delicious;
it’s raw and pungent, it smells like a fart — which reminds him… Tony
recognizes an opportunity here and decides to get his beer himself. He
waddles over to the fridge, opens it, peers in, farts (audibly), takes a
bottle out, shuts the fridge door, farts (louder this time), twists the
bottle top open and takes a swig. Farts again, a long and drawn one
with a stink so strong and unpleasant even Tony’s surprised. He didn’t
realize he had it in him, this early in the day, and he looks over his
shoulder at Lucinda to see her reaction. She’s busy with her meat
grinder, looking like death warmed up.
‘What’s your problem?’ he
asks, annoyed at her silence. Stupid cow, has no sense of humour. God,
she’s getting on, thinks Tony, noting the lines around Lucinda’s tightly
closed mouth, the slight sag in her jaw, the crow’s feet around her
eyes. She’s putting it on, too. Tony lets out a sigh of disappointment.
And she used to be so bonny, thinks Tony, remembering a much younger,
much bonnier Lucinda when she was a perky-breasted young thing who used
to make him laugh. Ah, but she’s long gone, thinks Tony, looking at
Lucinda’s closed, disapproving face.
‘You got something to say?’
Tony asks. He might just be spoiling for a wee little fight to enliven
the afternoon. Tony likes to argue with Lucinda; it gives him the
opportunity to tell her a few home truths, to really let her know how
he’s feeling about her these days, and for good reason too. But today
Tony is feeling a wee bit tired. Maybe later, thinks Tony, multitasking
in the middle of this contemplation; he’s glugging his beer and
scratching his ass — right on the stain — and managing all this time to
scrutinize his wife who, he knows, is quite aware how he feels about her
these days. ‘I thought so,’ he mutters when Lucinda declines to
comment; instead she opens the pantry, turning her back on him,
defiantly it seems to Tony who’s filing this gesture of disrespect for
later. He knows Lucinda’s transgression, her turning her back on him,
will cost her dearly later on this evening when they finish their Sunday
with a wee little argument. Tony will triumph of course; poor old
charmless Lucinda will cry. Tony’s quite looking forward to it but right
now he has other diversions on his mind so he leaves and returns to the
living room, to his sanctuary where the curtains are drawn, the couch
is still warm and the second half is about to start.
In the pantry,
Lucinda breathes a sigh of relief. The sight of Tony makes her literally
sick and the sound of his voice makes her want to drown herself. But
Lucinda has developed a coping mechanism over the years; a moment of
silence in the pantry is all she needs. A transient thought of a life
lived long ago and left behind flits through her consciousness; she sees
herself as a young girl, pretty, carefree, laughing on the arm of a
handsome young man (not Tony), going out to spend the day in the company
of people she likes. But it is a transient thought and it stays true to
its nature. Lucinda wipes her hands on her apron, grabs her good luck
charm necklace and begins the ritual. She fingers her charms, one by
one: the heart, the unicorn, the book, the star, the clock, the bicycle,
the seahorse, the thimble… Lucinda’s fingers are looking for the
thimble, her most recent acquisition, the newest and biggest charm she’s
had but it’s gone. Oh dear, I’ve lost the thimble, but what can I do
about it now? I’m gonna have to look for it later, sighs Lucinda and
goes on with the ritual, fingering the next charm, a tiny pair of ballet
slippers — for the baby girl she used to wish for — and taking deep
breaths. She’s feeling okay now; even the feel of those ballet slippers
doesn’t upset her; she’s grown out of that desire. In fact, Lucinda’s
grateful there’s been no children born to her out of this marriage, and
she counts it as a blessing. It would have been awful bringing up
children in this household, Lucinda thinks every time her fingers touch
the tiny silver shoes, and it gives her comfort. She’s calm now and
quite determined to get through the afternoon. Lucinda gathers the few
remaining ingredients to finish her sausage mixture and leaves the
pantry.
A few hours later, the Sunday dinner is taking place. Tony
and Lucinda sit in the dining room — at opposite ends of the long dining
table acquired long ago right after their wedding when things were good
and children (lots) were on the cards — eating their dinner. The room
is filled with the setting sun and the background noise of the Sunday
night news. Tony’s chewing is front of house — unmissable, unpleasant
and crucial to the proceedings; the intensity of Tony’s chewing
indicates his level of enjoyment of the much anticipated Sunday dinner. A
lot depends on this and Lucinda knows it. She’s eating her sausage
though she’d rather stick to the mashed potatoes and the Brussels
sprouts; she loathes these sausages but it would be unwise to let it
show so she doesn’t. Lucinda has wised up over the years and for that
reason Tony does not suspect a thing; he’s chewing furiously, wolfing
down his eight’s sausage and his third helping of mashed potatoes, and a
pile of Brussels sprouts saturated with gravy, and he’s doing all
right; he’s in heaven, things couldn’t get any better except he’d like
another beer. He gives Lucinda the nod and bangs his fist on the table
to get her going. His mouth, his stomach and his lungs are full to
bursting; Tony’s unable to speak as usual at this point, but nothing
needs to be said. He wants his beer. Lucinda knows, is quite aware of
the routine so she puts down her cutlery and leaves the table.
Lucinda
enters the kitchen. The room is ablaze with light. The setting sun had
snuck in through the open window while she was gone and worked its magic
to surprise her. And Lucinda is surprised; the space looks so pretty,
so warm and inviting, so full of light, Lucinda feels so… she doesn’t
know what she’s feeling but knows it’s good and she wants to keep on
feeling it. She takes a couple of steps and now she’s in the middle of
the room, feeling good. A gust of wind shuts the door behind her, not
loudly, only just so. It would be an easy sound to miss if one were not
listening.
Lucinda didn’t hear it. She stands in the middle of her
kitchen — that drab, dreaded room in which she spends most of her time —
thinking how pretty the orange glow, thinking she’d like to look out
the window for a bit ‘cause the sunrays dancing about the walls are
making her dizzy. But Tony wants his beer, the little voice inside her
head whispers, is tugging on her conscience, so Lucinda takes a
reluctant step towards the fridge. Just then, she hears something.
She
hears music and it’s coming from the window. It’s pipes and drums and
trumpets; A marching band! Lucinda exclaims and rushes to the window to
look. It is a marching band, complete with pipes and drums and trumpets,
playing a familiar tune. Oh, when the saints go marching in … Oh, when
the saints go marching in …
There’s red uniforms and silly hats; How
pretty! Lucinda exclaims. There’s children running alongside the band; a
crowd has gathered and it seems the whole street is out in full force.
Lucinda is intrigued; she sticks her head out the window and forgets,
for the moment, everything else that’s going on in her life right now.
In
her life right now Tony is getting hot under the collar, back in the
living room where his Sunday dinner is in progress. He’s down to his
tenth’s sausage and getting low on the gravy. The Brussels sprouts are
few and far in between, and Tony’s throat is dry. Very dry. Tony’s
Sunday is not going according to plan.
Where is that hag with my
beer? fumes Tony, chewing furiously, wolfing down his tenth’s sausage.
What does a man have to do to get a drink in his own house? Tony
grumbles, feeling dry, full to bursting, thirsty and disrespected, on
top of everything else. I’m really gonna have to sort her out; Tony
bangs his fist on the table with a tremendous force. The gravy boat
jumps, falls off the edge of the dining room table, and shatters to bits
on the polished parquetry. A small but dense stain is spreading towards
the carpet’s edge; dear Lord, it’s reached the fringe! The carpet is
officially stained.
‘Lucindaah!’ Tony roars just as the marching band
passes by his front lawn. The din is deafening. Tony shoves the last
piece of sausage and potato mash into his gob. ‘Lucin—’ Tony chokes. He
chokes on the word, the sausage, the potato, the gravy that’s run out
and the beer he never got. It’s the real deal, Tony is dying and it’s
going down like they show it in the movies. First, he grips the table
with both hands, bends over, tries to cough it out. No sound comes.
Next, he lets go of the table, grasps his throat with both hands.
Nothing happens. He keeps on choking. He’s choking on the sausage, the
potatoes, the gravy that’s run out, the beer he never got and every
single thing that’s ever made him angry and hateful, and it all comes
down to one thing: Lucinda!
Tony’s eyes begin to bulge; it really
looks like he’s in awe of the objects surrounding him; the plate, the
cutlery thrown carelessly over his napkin, the bowl of potatoes, the
bowl of sausages… The veins on Tony’s forehead are pulsating; his head
is swimming and his last thought is about to occur. Sausages… thinks
Tony, sadly but without regret, who would have thought? He keels over,
pulling down the table cloth. The man crashes to the ground like a sack
of beans, sags like a bag of wet clothes and lies still, blue-faced,
slack-jawed and with eyes wide open, at the foot of his dining table,
wearing nothing but a pair of threadbare, stained undies.

The Dead Husbands Club by Ivana Hruba is now available to download from Amazon, Smashwords,
Barnes and Noble and elsewhere on the net where good books are sold.

Cabbage, Strudel and Trams

Part I

CZECHOSLOVAKIA, 1981 – 1983

Things happen. Things you would
never have dreamed of. Things you might have thought about just maybe happening on the other side of the
galaxy but you’d never imagine them happening in your own life. But they do.

My name is Franta. I live in
Vendula’s head. Vendula is a girl who likes to daydream. She conjured me out of
thin air like magic when she was just a wee little thing, and we’ve been
together ever since. Our life is filled with good moments and good people, and
the sum of it, we fancy, makes for quite a good tale.

- - -

Chapter one in which the family roasts a chook when
Uncle Stan decides to search for greener pastures

I knew Vendula was special the moment I saw her.
Clutching a ladybug in her chubby little fist, Vendula sat in the meadow full
of blooming daisies. A drunken bumblebee made her laugh, and her voice, like
silver bells covered with snow, chimed a quiet, pretty tune. I was enchanted
and decided to stay.

At first, living with Vendula was
plain sailing. Luck had always followed her like a puppy on a leash. A skip and
a sniff and a leg up every so often, we knew where we were going. Vendula, a
ballerina in a paper weight world, sailed through life as if every day was a
walk through a rose garden where friends gathered like fluffy clouds. But then
the summer of ‘79 rolled in and overnight things started to go pear-shaped.

First there was puberty. It came
upon us suddenly, like a runaway train, bringing boys, breasts and training
bras to cause havoc amongst Vendula’s friends who bloomed alarmingly in the
most obvious places while Vendula doodled with her fountain pen.

‘Let’s chuck a waterbomb on the
footpath,’ she offered blissfully when the girls came to hang out.

Oh, Vendula. Tsk. Tsk. You’re such
a child.Smokes were lit. Heads were
shaken. It seemed that a new attitude, new rules of conduct, had sprung up
amongst the girls like mushrooms after rain when Vendula wasn’t looking.

Then Sylvie, Vendula’s bestest
friend ever, moved away to Cured Ham. Yes, Cured, of all places. Like a stunned
pigVendula sat there when Sylvie told her. I’m moving to Cured Ham. Vendula
keeled over. You can’t be, she stammered in disbelief, but Sylvie shrugged.
That’s the way it is. Sylvie moved away, leaving a hole the size of the whole
world. Of course, the girls wrote a while but you know how it is. Out of sight,
out of mind; the friendship died a Cured Ham death.

To top it all, Uncle Stan defected
to West Germany, causing a religious conversion in the process. True, the fashion
of the day dictated that every thinking, progressive human bean make a stand
against the commies; Mother, however, didn’t see it that way when Uncle Stan
first called with the news in the middle of the night.

‘You what?!’ Mother shouted,
descending upon the telephone like a plague of locusts. ‘Dee-fected?’

We clustered around. A hush of
biblical proportions fell as with bated breath we hovered over the receiver
like the three wise men over baby Jesus. Mother, for once speechless, listened
to the steady flow of Uncle Stan’s words. I’m
not comin’ back, sis. I’ve had a gutful of it. All them effin queues and what
the fuck for? A miserable loaf of bread and a piece of cheese if you’re lucky.
That’s not the way I wanna live. Fuck the communists, they can build their
effin communism without me. On and on he went, venting to Mother who
gradually lost all colour and sat there gaping wordlessly, as white as a ghost.
Indeed, in the feeble light of the night lamp, she looked a fright with her
plastered down hair, wide open mouth and bulging eyes, and for a moment she
appeared to be frozen in time. Eventually, though, she began to show signs of
life. She made a gesture as if she could not believe what she was hearing. Then
she made another as if she had no words to express what she was feeling. After
that the stupor eased and she let him have it.

‘Do you realize what you’ve done to
me?’ Mother screeched, shouting that Pavel was in his senior year at school,
and what are the odds he won’t get into college now, and poor Vendula, she’ll
have no chance of a proper education at all, will she, she’ll be lucky to punch
tickets on the tram, you selfish fool!

In this vein the conversation
continued for about fifteen minutes. Vendula and I loitered while Mother and
Dad argued. Well, Mother argued and Dad as usual kept calm; nevertheless, a lot
of unpleasant things were mentioned before the connection was suddenly
terminated. Mother began to weep. Dad stood there waiting for instructions
while Vendula nurtured a vision involving a new pair of jeans she dreamed Uncle
Stan would send her after he settles in and gets a job, and she was secretly
pleased about Uncle Stan defecting ‘cause she was busting to get out of Pavel’s
hand-me-downs. However, right then, in view of Mother’s condition (very
troubled), Vendula said nothing of this desire. Meanwhile, Mother scheduled a
family council for the next morning. Then we all went to bed.

- - -

In the morning Mother broke the
news to Pavel who had slept the night through and was just now waking up,
drinking a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. He took it philosophically.

‘Hmmm,’ Pavel hmmed without
enthusiasm, looking bored. I was not surprised. Having no interest in politics
or defecting uncles, this quiet teenage boy could hardly be expected to react
otherwise. Still, Mother might have taken exception, but luckily she wasn’t
paying attention. She was thinking of her parents, babka Zlatka and deda Anton,
who had to be told of this disaster, this
dreadful turn of events, this lamentable state of affairs which will prove to
be our undoing, Mother orated to herself, staring gloomily into the fridge.
Eventually, she took out a chicken and decided to make the announcement over
lunch.

After the nocturnal kerfuffle,
telling our grandparents was relatively easy. ‘Lord, have mercy upon his soul!’
babka cried, falling to her knees when, after the chook had been devoured and
the strudel not yet served, Mother, wearing a slightly constipated expression,
stood up and addressed the old folk as Dearest
mother and father… It was all over in two minutes.

Babka, the poor thing, cried
buckets. Her tiny figure shaking and her ovine face contorted with grief, babka
cried drenching hankies, towels, and sheets. Deda, on the other hand, couldn’t
have been prouder. Dry-eyed, he sat at the table sipping slivovice, his imposing corpulent self growing larger with every
passing moment as he chest-puffed about his son the freedom fighter. Every now
and then deda’s nose, that enormous bulbous thing hanging from his face like a
good-sized cucumber, quivered and twitched as deda’s suppressed emotions got the
better of him.

In this fashion, the afternoon wore
on. Babka cried, Mother fussed with her coffee and cakes in the kitchen, Pavel
sat somewhere quietly uninvolved and Dad retired to the toilet with the
newspaper. Deda Anton cornered Vendula in the living room where he held forth
on the family history of freedom fighting, crapping mainly about his brother,
known to all as Uncle Bob who, when the commies took over in 1948, had
emigrated to Australia where, according to deda, he done good. Throughout this speech babka cried, Mother served hard
liquor, and the kids didn’t care. After the coffee had been drunk and the
strudel had been gobbled up, the family gathered to pay homage to Uncle Stan.

The way we were going one would
have thought we’d lost a truly exceptional human being; a genius of
immeasurable talent, a humanitarian worthy of a Nobel Prize nomination at the
very least, which, realistically speaking, was not the case at all. Truth be
told, Uncle Stan was uninspiring and uninspired. His idea of a joke was to fart
loudly and then blame it on Vendula. On a good day, he’d ask Pavel to pull his
finger. Thus exhausting his bag of tricks, Uncle Stan would then turn to drink.
The kids never gave him a thought. So now, prattling about Uncle Stan’s
outstanding qualities, we stressed, most of all, his significance as the family
anchor without which our lives were bound to plunge into chaos.

The evening ended when deda Anton,
due to excessive intake of slivovice,
keeled over and fell face down onto the floor, taking with him Mother’s prized
possession, the cigar tree. The cigar-shaped pods of the plant exploded on
impact like fireworks, showering the prostrate deda with tiny black seeds from
top to bottom. Looking like a giant poppy seed bun, deda snored wedged in the
doorway. Well, what can I tell you? All’s well that ends well. We tried to move
him, I swear we did. We pulled him by the feet but his head bumped on the
doorstep, then we tried pulling his arms but this maneuver caused uproar as
deda’s pants began to slip. In the end we left him where he was and everybody
we went to bed.

- - -

Chapter two in which Uncle Stan’s foreign
correspondence comes under scrutiny, and Cousin Alice ends up writhing on the
tiles

Predictably, after the festivities died down, things turned
a bit more serious. Before the week was out, Mother and Dad and the old folk
had some interviews at the police station regarding Uncle Stan’s departure. As
customary in those circumstances, everyone was just devastated.

‘We’d never have guessed he could
do such a thing!’ Mother, suitably appalled at Uncle Stan’s behaviour, clutched
her head theatrically for the benefit of the interrogators. Bemoaning Uncle
Stan’s weak moral fiber, Mother declared his conduct at odds with the strong
communist tradition we’ve apparently nurtured.

‘Utterly incomprehensible!’Mother wailed, proposing diminished
mental capacity and citing numerous cases of it in the family. At this point,
babka Zlatka, bless ‘er,
inadvertently advanced the argument when she piped up about Uncle Stan’s
foreign correspondence.

‘You know,’ babka nodded to the
bewildered crowd, ‘the Bulgarians.’

Interrogations that followed
eventually revealed that, when in junior high, Uncle Stan exchanged letters
with a Bulgarian schoolgirl, whom he met at an asthmatic children’s summer
camp. Despite Mother’s protestations … ‘But they’re ours, the Bulgarians are on
our side…’ Special Agent Sharp wrote
everything down. Promising to look into it, he terminated the interview. For now.

- - -

September came and with it the
start of a new school year. As usual, Vendula hung out with her honorary cousin
Alice. The kinship, like their relationship, was defined by its very tenuity.
The girls’ family ties dated back to the golden days of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire when Alice’s gr-gr-greatgrandad and Vendula’s gr-gr-greatgrandad had
been village idiots together, their combined intellect employed to keep the
geese off the village green. The girls’ relationship worked along similar
lines.

In the mornings the girls walked to
school together and in the afternoons they walked back home. On the way Alice
talked and Vendula listened. Frankly, it wasn’t much fun. Alice, a short fat
lump of a girl with a horsey face, was conceited and a bit of a bully. She
constantly talked about herself; her hair, her face, her make-up, the boys who
liked her and the ones she liked, and she also talked about her clothes.
Vendula walked two steps behind her, listening and nodding, and sometimes she
even said something but Alice always shook her head and said:don’t start with your bullshit,
Vendula, not now, listen to this, and Vendula just sighed and kept quiet.

One day I asked her why she put up
with it.

I don’t know, Vendula replied, looking
grim. It’s the way things are.

Now it was my turn to sigh. Things can be changed, you know, I told
her but Vendula just sat there looking like a small sad puppy. To cheer her up
I promised her that Destiny would soon lend a hand.

We didn’t have long to wait. The
very next morning when the girls were getting ready for school, an opportunity
for payback presented itself. Alice was in front of her mirror, combing her
hair. Vendula was just then telling her something but Alice wasn’t paying
attention. She was busy shaping her fringe. When she ordered Vendula to bring
the hairspray, I noticed Alice had forgotten to take out some curlers pinned up
on top of her head. Had she not whipped up her fringe into a great whirlpool of
curls at the front, Alice would have easily spotted those two fat beauties
perched up there, but as it was, she had no idea ‘cause she declared herself
ready to go. We walked out into the corridor. Vendula and I were deliberating
(I was against telling Alice, the situation had potential) when the door of the
apartment directly opposite the lift opened and a tall young man emerged. At
that point Vendula ceased to struggle with her conscience and we proceeded to
the lifts.

‘How are you, girls?’ asked the
tall young man, giving a dazzling smile.

Alice beamed like a lighthouse.
Turning to Vendula as if to say: see, I
told you he likes me, she winked. Meanwhile the lift arrived. We entered
the cabin first, with the tall young man gallantly holding the door open. Then
he followed us in, closed the door and pressed the lift button. The lift
shuddered, then lurched, and finally began its creaky ride down the nine
floors. Throughout all this Alice kept smiling at the handsome young dude who
could not take his eyes off her hairdo.

‘Soooo,’ the young fellow said,
making a vague gesture towards Alice. ‘New trend?’

‘What? This old thing?’ Alice, none
the wiser, blushed, wriggling in her brand new Levi’s. The young man with the
engaging smile turned slightly towards Vendula and raised his eyebrows in the
way I envisioned people would. Vendula beamed. The two stood there grinning at
each other until the lift touched down.

Alice speculated on her chance all
the way to school. Vendula was cautiously optimistic; maybe the young man was
just being polite, she opined but Alice shushed her.

‘Are you crazy?’ she snorted.
‘Didn’t you see the way he smiled at me?’

Of course, we saw the way he smiled
at her. The same sort of smirk she was getting now walking through the school
gate, the school yard, the corridor and all the way to her desk. Eventually,
someone took pity and tapped her on the shoulder. Alice then fled to the loo
where she shrieked writhing on the tiles.

- - -

The girls made up after school on
the way home, but only after Vendula promised we’d go past Danek’s house. Danek
was Alice’s latest crush, a teenage hooligan she’d been drooling over since
last Monday when we discovered him sitting on a park bench, spitting on the
footpath.

‘He’s gooorgeous,’ Alice had raved.

‘And so accomplished,’ I remarked
before Vendula had time to do anything about it.

Alice looked at her and frowned.

‘Well, all that spitting, you know,
it takes some practice to get it just right,’ Vendula offered lamely, trying to
save the situation.

Alice rolled her eyes and told
Vendula she was a loser.

‘You’ll never catch anyone looking
like this,’ Alice smirked, seizing this opportunity to berate Vendula about her
being Vendula.

Vendula stared. She had no
intention of ‘catching’ anyone. She liked her pigtails and she didn’t give a
rat’s ass about what people thought.

Shaking her head in disbelief,
Alice threw her hands up in the air. ‘You look like a clown in those pants.’

In reply Vendula shrugged; she
liked the braces, they held up Pavel’s trousers nicely and anyway, she felt
comfortable so why bother changing anything?

For a few moments Alice was
speechless. Then she made one last attempt to set Vendula on the right path.
She offered her some old lipstick and eyeshadow just to see what a difference a
bit of colour would make but Vendula refused saying that Mother would seriously
freak out.

To this Alice replied with a grimace and a tap
to her forehead to indicate what she thought of Mother’s interference in
Vendula’s world.

For once, Vendula agreed with
Alice. Of course, she would have preferred Mother to be a bit more ‘with it’, a
bit more understanding, because, believe you me, dealing with her was nothing
but a trial.

Failing to note the passage of
time, Mother treated Vendula as if she were still in primary school. Not only
did she not allow her to wear make-up but she also argued with her over
Vendula’s choice of clothes. To make matters worse Mother insisted Vendula pay
attention to her schoolwork, complete all homework and go to bed early on
school nights! And that wasn’t all! On top of everything, Vendula also had to
do chores and spend time with the family.

In contrast, Alice’s mum was a
dream. Aunt Babsie was hardly ever home and when she was, Alice was allowed to
stay up as long as she liked. Aunt Babsie never checked homework declaring it a
waste of time, and she insisted Alice wear make-up to school.
When they went shopping, Aunt Babsie approved everything with anything you like, darling, so the
Christmas Alice turned twelve, she bought herself a padded bra and a pair of
stilettos.

You’re the best mum in the world!
Alice had cried as she wobbled across the living room, trying on her new shoes.
Seeing the envy on Vendula’s face, Aunt Babsie smiled. Later she treated the
girls to a hot toddy in the kitchen and told them what there was to know about
men.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the
differing parenting philosophies of the two matriarchs, the ladies did not get
on. As a concession to tradition, a nodding acquaintance was kept up between
the Zhvuk and the Klutz household, the precarious friendship between the girls
treated with disapproval by Mother and casual indifference by Aunt Babsie, who
feigned interest in Vendula to pump her for information. On the whole, I was
glad Vendula was a Zhvuk and not a Klutz because the Klutzes were an odd pair.

Uncle Klutz, affectionately known
as The Old Idiot, was a short, pear-shaped man with a silly birdlike face and a
talent for missing the point. A gloomy grumbler, he had but one passion in his
life: his Fiat. Unlike Aunt Babsie who took keen interest in just about
everything that did not concern her, Uncle Klutz’s world revolved around his
garage where he spent all his free time. Of course, Aunt Babsie, after
seventeen years of marriage, developed an understanding attitude.

‘He could die in there for all I
care,’ she used to tell the girls,
‘and the sooner, the better.’

Yes, Aunt Babsie was nothing if not
understanding. Big, loud and ostentatious, Aunt Babsie also had an affectionate
family nickname: The Old Cow. Her spare time was spent discussing the love life
of teenage girls, applauding boldness and encouraging experimentation in a most
unappealing way; still, she understood the passage of time and was popular for
it.

Really, you couldn’t find a family
more different to ours. Unlike Vendula’s parents whose marriage prospered on
the basis of Mother being indisputably in charge, the Klutzes argued
constantly. They argued like lawyers; battles were waged about too many things
to mention here but mainly they were about The Young Slut Alice. Uncle K., you
see, did not approve of Aunt Babsie’s parenting methods.

‘I’ll have none of these
shenanigans here,’ he grumbled when he caught us dressing up in Alice’s room.
He was going to take action, set up some
rules! Uncle K. shouted towards the open door but Aunt Babsie, as usual,
swiftly stepped in.

Uncle Klutz took a deep breath.He
meant to say something in his defense but Aunt Babsie, well, she had presence,
about a hundred and twenty kilos of it, and she knew how to use it. Mustachios
bristling, Aunt Babsie put up her fist. That fist, purple, meaty, swollen like
a ripe tomato about to burst, she put up very close to Uncle Klutz’s nose, and
he, thinking he’d like to strangle The Old Cow, blinked furiously but said
nothing.

When the silence emanating from the
kitchen became eerie, Vendula suggested we’d go see if he was all right.

What could Vendula do? She had to
agree.

‘Certainly not,’ Vendula nodded.
‘Not worth it at all.’

Cabbage, Strudel and Trams by Ivana Hruba is available to download from Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and elsewhere on the net where good books are sold.

Planet of Dreams: Go West

Chapter 1

A day in the dungeon begins with a sound. It is a
distinct and quite unpleasant sound, of footsteps coming closer. From
inside the dungeon these footsteps sound like slaps; sometimes I imagine
slabs of raw beef are falling on the flagstones. One, two, three, four,
five, six chunks of moist sirloin lying on the ground in a bloody mess.
Then silence. Hopeful on my side of the dungeon door, indifferent, I
imagine, in the corridor. The silence lasts three seconds, at the most.
On the other side of the door a key is inserted into the lock, turned,
then a chain is pulled and the small metal tray in the door falls open
towards you like a drawbridge. In the next instance, your provisions for
the day, a jug of water and a bowl of something, a stew or soup,
appear. You have exactly ten seconds to take the food off the tray
before the tray draws up, closing the opening. The chain rattles, the
key turns, leaves the lock. The sound of footsteps resumes. This time
the sound has an entirely different tone; this time, sand is squeaking
underfoot, on a beach somewhere, in an open, sunny place. One, two,
three, four, five, six sandy squeaks, squeaking away until nothing but
the sound of your own breathing remains. The entire exercise lasts
exactly two minutes. Then it’s just you. To do with yourself as you see
fit. And what do you do with yourself for the rest of your dark, quiet
day?
You eat. You drink. You sleep. You exercise, walk, stretch —
your body and your mind. You pee creatively in your bucket; you’re
making patterns, percussive and melodic both, just to hear a sound, a
something other than the voice in your head. When you’re done peeing,
you daydream. Day and night, you let your imagination run wild ‘cause
you’re stuck in this very dark, quiet place with only your thoughts,
your bladder and three plastic utensils to entertain yourself with.

Chapter 2

I was in the dungeon for exactly forty-five days. Only
two things worth mentioning happened during that time. Day twenty I
managed a thousand push-ups, and day twenty-nine I found a message
scratched into the floor under the pee bucket. I glimpsed the words,
when the bucket slot opened and the bucket was pulled out to be emptied,
in a pool of light in the spot the bucket had occupied. PLANET OF
DREAMS GO WEST. Then the bucket returned and the slot closed, and I was
left thinking I had dreamt the whole thing. But I hadn’t dreamt it; the
message was there two days later, when the bucket was emptied again.
This time I saw it as clear as day: PLANET OF DREAMS GO WEST scratched
into the stone, quite neatly, in small precise letters, clearly visible
from where I crouched close to the light streaming in from the corridor.
For
some reason I felt like laughing. Of course, outwardly I didn’t make a
sound as making noise was strictly forbidden, punishable by a reduction
in rations. I couldn’t risk it so I kept quiet. I gazed at the letters,
memorizing them like a poem. PLANET OF DREAMS GO WEST. I wondered about
what it meant and who put it there. Was it a message? Was this something
I should take seriously? It may have been put there especially for me.
Or maybe it was nothing, just a by-product of some poor bugger’s
diseased imagination because losing your mind was on the cards for
anyone stuck here long enough, and there have been plenty who had gone
mad in this dungeon. Eventually they all died in here, alone and stark
raving mad. It was only a matter of time before the same thing happened
to me. And who knew, perhaps this was my first step towards the
inevitable; perhaps this message was all in my head and I was already
imagining things.

She stood in the doorway, framed like a
portrait. A young girl on the brink of womanhood. She stood there,
looking like a flower about to bloom, looking fresh, smelling good. She
looked at me and I felt I couldn’t breathe, she was so beautiful. Then
she stepped inside the room and took my hand. Her touch was
electrifying. Welcome to your Planet of Dreams, Handsome.

I
imagined this pleasant scenario over and over, each time adding a new
and more delicious detail until I could no longer stand it. It was a
productive way to spend my time, that endless stretch of nothingness I
had on my hands to mould into whatever I wanted. But I only wanted Her
‘cause she alone made sense to me in my situation: I was nineteen, a
convicted felon condemned to rot in a dungeon, and PLANET OF DREAMS GO
WEST was the only thing that really kept me from dying on the inside.

Planet of Dreams: Go West by Ivana Hruba is available to download from Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and elsewhere on the net where good books are sold.

A Decent Ransom

A Story of a Kidnapping Gone Right

Like a lotus rising … from the
murky depths of the muddy swamp … day forty three begins … to unfold … when
along come a few moments … which in hindsight … we should have cherished. … I
am seeing … thinking … wishing … and thus I am … influencing the consciousness
inherent equally in all life … which is all the things that happen. It stands
to reason then … that … to remove the consciousness … is to … cease to be. …
However … it is not so … for as long as I am … she continues to exist within
myself. … If you accept me … I will continue to exist … if only in your
imagination. Accept.

Part I

Dear God,

Please make Kenny change his mind. Please make him forget
his plan. I have tried but he won’t listen to me. I don’t want him to kidnap
that lady and I don’t want to help him but if you don’t do something, he’s
going to make me. Please, God, help me just this once and I will never ask you
for anything again. This time I promise.

Phoebus

Chapter
1 - Phoebus

It began with a perfect plan.
Shape-wise we had a circle, a simple uncomplicated curve to guide us
comfortably from one thing to another, an easy predictable ride promising a
natural progression from A to B, C and D, and so on until we reached our
destination. But somewhere down that smooth line, I think around F, it all went
pear-shaped.

I had warned Kenny before it all
started but he wouldn’t listen.

You’ll n–never pull it off, I told him.
Kenny’s only response was to burp.

Shirtless, he lounged on the sofa,
drinking rum. In between swallows he grinned and pulled at his chest hair; to
show how relaxed he felt, he drummed a beat on his stomach with his fingers.

What are you worried about? Kenny
laughed, seeing I stood there with an anxious frown on my face. I’ve thought
this thing through.

This statement did nothing to alleviate
my fears. Indeed, excepting Uncle Clem, there was nothing I ever really feared
more than Kenny’s way of thinking things through.

You can’t just k–kidnap people, I said,
trying to sound firm. Of course, it didn’t work. In those days, whenever I was
upset, my stutter just became worse. Y–you just c–can’t.

Kenny frowned. Suspending the beat, he
clicked his spurs and flicked back his sombrero. Fixing me with a stare, he
raised his eyebrow and held it there until I apologized. Then he slapped me on
the shoulder and went back to drinking. A brief silence followed during which I
corresponded with God while Kenny lay there contemplating his favorite tree
just visible out of the kitchen window. The moment passed when Kenny cackled,
the shrill sound reminding me of our mum, who also had liked to laze about in
her underwear.

Indeed, looking at Kenny sprawled
across the sofa, I really saw her tipping the bottle, her toothless mouth
gaping wide and her cackle ringing in my ears.

Mum left us a long time ago. For a
while, I missed her. I wrote to her a lot, always signing Kenny’s name next to
mine until one day he sprung me. He punched me in the face, and when I reeled
backwards, he punched me in the stomach. As I lay on the lino, choking on the
blood gushing out my nose, the consequences of my subterfuge became painfully
clear: Kenny was seriously pissed off. He stood over me a while looking grim,
looking as if he couldn’t decide what to do next, but eventually he bent to my
ear and whispered, his words appearing in front of my eyes like skywriting. If
you ever sign my name again, I will do to you things Uncle Clem wouldn’t dream
about. The words faded and I promised myself I would never mention mum again.
Still, I thought about her from time to time, especially on days like today
when Kenny hogged the sofa, drinking and cackling, and looking like a bloated
toad.

What are you staring at, you turd?
Kenny suddenly asked, noticing that I hadn’t cleared the table. Snapping out of
my reverie, I jumped to it. Meanwhile, Kenny continued drinking and when he was
done, he threw the empty bottle out of the window. It hit the roof of the
crapper and broke into pieces. At the sound, Kenny snapped his fingers. Seeing
his mood was darkening, I quickly dropped to my knees and gently, carefully
eased off his boots. Feeling more comfortable, Kenny stretched out and soon
fell asleep.

I sat quietly by his side, watching
over him. As he lay there sleeping, my brother looked to me as innocent as a
newborn babe dreaming of good things to come. Relaxed, his face looked
peaceful, the scars, the dents and the bumps barely visible; it was as if his
real face came out of hiding, showing Kenny the way he was on the inside, a
kind, generous and big-hearted man. Seeing him like this, I wished everybody
could. However, deep down I knew people would always see Kenny only from the
outside.

Of course, on the outside things are
always a bit complicated. I had known from the beginning I should have handled
everything differently. I should have talked to someone other than God, but the
thing is, there truly was no one else. As far as I can remember, we had always
lived alone. And I mean alone, with no other people around.

Pristine Mountain, population three, we
used to joke, but it was true. Nobody ever came to see us. When I was little, I
thought that people didn’t come because they couldn’t find our cottage hidden
in the woods, but as I grew older I realized that people didn’t come because
they didn’t want to know us. And who could blame them? After all, we were dirt
poor, our mother was a drunk, and Kenny a dangerous psychotic beast best left
alone. Accordingly, people avoided us like the plague. Even the cops let us be.
Only once, when mum was still around, they came to make enquiries after the
truck stop down the road from us burned down, but they were dead wrong. Still,
they accused Kenny and they wanted to take him away, but Kenny barricaded us in
the house and there was a bit of a siege. At first, the cops spoke to him
through a funnel; however, as Kenny wouldn’t budge, eventually they took out
their weapons.

Kenny stood his ground. Sixteen years
old and just four feet two inches high, he looked to me as powerful as God. The
very image of brute force, Kenny faced the enemy in all his compact glory,
standing motionless under the window. Of course, he had meant to fill the frame
with his menacing pose, but being bootless, he had just managed to show the top
of his sombrero. Nevertheless, he was terrifying to behold. His trusty sling in
one hand and a full beer bottle in the other, Kenny roared at the fat cop who
was in charge: come get me, Shorty! All hell broke loose.

When the cops charged, mum and I hid
behind the kitchen sofa. Kenny, however, remained at the window, dodging
bullets and giving as good as he got. From behind the couch we watched his
every move, feeling very proud. Mum especially was deeply stirred. She fell
into reminiscing about Kenny’s dad, alleging Kenny had the same irresistible
charisma, the kind of animal allure that made women swoon. She also claimed
that she really missed him. This I strictly did not believe because when sober,
mum maintained that Kenny’s dad had been nothing but a loser. During the siege,
though, mum kept drinking.

Takes after his dad, she slobbered,
watching her firstborn slinging bottles through the window, and you could see
just how pleased she was. Although I shared in her happiness, I hoped her
claims weren’t true because Kenny’s dad had left us two weeks after coming out
of jail, taking our television and the car. Mum had tried to stop him. She
jumped on the bonnet and aimed her shotgun at him telling him to leave our
things alone, but he just grabbed the gun by the barrel and knocked her out.
Then he left and we never saw him again. Still, mum had a soft spot for Kenny
all those years.

Anyway, all this happened a long time
ago. The siege had ended after the cops had busted every window in the house.
Just as they were about to storm, new evidence surfaced implicating the owner
of the shop, and the cops redirected their investigation, leaving us to sift
through the debris in peace.

For a while our life went on quite as
we were used to. Kenny kept his job in town, collecting garbage for the
council, and mum stayed home looking after the house. Well, she was supposed to
but she could never manage it, so it fell to me to do the housework after
school. Still, we were happy until my dad came to live with us. Not long after
he came, Kenny left. I didn’t blame him; it was for the best, seeing father
never took to him. He could just tolerate me, father said, but this tolerance
did not extend to Kenny who got the strap fairly regularly. After Kenny left, I
copped it because father said I was an ugly bastard and he was sick of looking
at me. But then one night he broke my arm, accidentally, and by the time the
cops brought me back from the hospital, he was gone. Then mum started
corresponding with Noah. They fell in love and she moved out of town to be
closer to him because he still had a couple of years before parole. So then I
was truly alone and I was scared because Uncle Clem kept coming over. After a
while I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I tracked Kenny down and he came back to
take care of me. Of course, when Kenny returned Uncle Clem stopped coming and
nobody’s seen him since.

From then on we lived very well. I
mean, we weren’t rich or anything, but we enjoyed being together and doing
whatever we wanted. Well, Kenny did what he wanted, and I did whatever he
wanted me to do. This was a perfect arrangement for us. Of course, at times
Kenny could be harsh, even unreasonable, but to tell the truth, I wouldn’t have
had it any other way. I always knew that whatever decisions Kenny made, he made
with good intentions, wanting only the best for me, and for that I was
grateful.

After he got rid of Uncle Clem, Kenny
got a job at the truck stop which by then had been revamped and put under new
management. Kenny’s job was to put petrol into people’s cars. He also cleaned
their windshields and pumped their tires, but only if they asked, and this
suited him fine. Turning on the charm, Kenny told everyone there were
waterfalls in the mountains. Pleased they’d cottoned onto something that was
not in the brochure, the tourists always left a couple of bucks, especially
after Kenny told them the waterfalls were pristine, like really clear water
which nobody was allowed to see, and he gave directions. Sometimes people came
back to complain because, of course, they never found them waterfalls, but
Kenny never gave any money back. At any rate, nobody ever asked. I guess they
could see it would have been pointless.

Four years went by in this fashion,
each year much the same as the last. Then, just before last summer when I
turned fourteen, Kenny took me out of school and got me a job at the truck stop
too. I didn’t like it at first, chiefly because I missed the library, but as
the months went by, I changed my mind. After all, my leaving school had always
been only a matter of time.

I had never been any good at school
work. During lessons I preferred to do my own thing, either staring out the
window or reading novels under my desk. Initially, reading hadn’t been frowned
upon, but when it came out that I only read paperbacks about the wild wild
west, it was agreed my needs would be better served in Special Ed. Things did
not get any better there. I tried to pay attention, but somehow I could never
get Uncle Clem out of my head. I kept thinking about how much I hated him and
what it would take to kill him. Yes, every day when I sat at my desk gazing
into the sunshine, I imagined his death.

The manner of his demise varied,
depending on what I was reading at the time. One day he would be hanged,
another time he’d die from a gunshot to the heart or lie wounded in the middle
of the prairie, bleeding to death like a stuck pig. I liked him to suffer. Some
days I felt so inspired I had to kill him three or four times throughout the
day, even at lunch, which I spent alone in the library. But Uncle Clem aside,
school for me had always been a trial. My teachers considered me feeble-minded
and my peers a weirdo to be avoided at all costs. Whenever I approached people,
they scurried away like squirrels, or else I was shooed away as if I were a
mangy dog. In class I sat alone and as I never said a word, what with my
reading under the desk and not being asked an opinion, eventually people forgot
I was there and stopped seeing me altogether. Given the situation, Kenny’s
decision to terminate my painful existence there was a blessing. The fact was,
I never liked anybody from town and they plainly didn’t like me because nobody
ever questioned why I stopped coming.

From the first day I started work at
the truck stop, I felt happier. I was in the kitchen mainly, washing dishes,
but sometimes I was allowed behind the counter and this I liked because I could
see Kenny outside, working the tourists over. It was there the Idea first
occurred to him.

That day I was out front selling pies.
We were busy and Kenny was in good form bamboozling the tourists; at the end of
our shift, he had cleared twenty five bucks. We used the money to buy a box of
wine and some beef jerky on the way home. We were really happy; it wasn’t often
we could afford treats. Kenny especially was feeling on top of the world. In
the truck, he kept talking footy and slapping me on the back good-naturedly all
the way up the mountain. He asked me about my day and even listened to my
replies, wearing such an interested expression that I got suspicious and began
to wonder a bit; the last time Kenny had shown such spirits, he finished up in
the watch house. He had thrashed Uncle Clem, and although that had been a good
thing, there was some unpleasantness. Kenny got arrested and it looked likely
he was going to jail, but Uncle Clem couldn’t be persuaded to press charges so
the cops had had no choice but to let Kenny go. Of course Kenny gloated,
lording it over me, laughing at my fears of losing him and saying he had always
known he’d come up trumps. Seeing him so happy, I had gone along with it,
pretending I agreed, but deep down I felt wretched, being certain he had just
had a lucky escape. And now I was getting the same sinking feeling, that
dreaded knot in the stomach telling me that something wasn’t right.

When we got home, Kenny’s good mood
continued. Feeling exhilarated, he decided to have a soak; he sat in the bath
with the door open, farting under water and cracking jokes while I prepared
dinner. Everything was going well, I had the food ready by the time Kenny
called me in to dry his back. I fetched his robe and his slippers, and then we
sat down to our regular Sunday feed: beans and sausages and creamy potato mash.
It was then Kenny made his announcement.

We’re going to kidnap a rich woman,
Kenny announced as I carefully ladled the hot beans into his bowl. We’ll clean
up! He banged his spoon triumphantly on the table, grinning from ear to ear.

Truly, at first I didn’t know what to
say. Having heard a lot of crap from Kenny in my life, I only sighed, keeping
my face devoid of all expression. But then as Kenny persevered with the grin,
beaming at me expectantly, I ventured to express my doubt.

You’ll never pull it off.

In response Kenny cuffed me, telling me
to shut up and listen.

It’ll be a piece of cake, Kenny
proclaimed confidently, tucking into his mash. She’s home alone all day. He
began to talk about his plan, speaking and eating at the same time, and I had
trouble keeping up; he certainly wasn’t making much sense to me. Indeed, Kenny
was very much on edge. He tore at his sausages and shoveled the beans into his
mouth at an extraordinary speed, shouting and gesticulating, and all the while
he never took his eyes off me, gauging my reaction. I tried to look happy but
on the inside I felt only dread, which I hoped to keep contained, but
eventually some of that dread showed on the surface because all of a sudden
Kenny stopped dead in his tracks and rolled his eyes. Clearly he was frustrated
with me because he sighed and banged his fist on the table so hard that the
dishes shook, and then he ordered me to get him a pencil. I quickly fetched it
while Kenny snorted at me to show his contempt, but I knew the worst was over
because he began drawing the plan on the tablecloth which, luckily for me,
happened to be the paper the butcher used to wrap our sausages in.

He drew the house fairly accurately, I
must say. I knew the place from way back when I had a job delivering real
estate pamphlets, and I thought Kenny’s sketch was very lifelike. One got the
feeling of space and light and fresh air through all those big floor-length
windows and the wide porch. I told Kenny they had a pool at the back but he
cuffed me again, growling that he wasn’t going to get bogged down in details.
He gestured for me to sit down so I quickly cleared the dishes and put a bottle
of rum on the table.

Kenny took a swig and tapped the end of
his spoon on the butcher paper right in the middle of the driveway on our
blueprint, thus indicating that he was ready for dessert. I served the sweets
which, as usual, were the leftover cheesecake I got from work on Sundays
because they didn’t like to keep it past seven days.

I carved the pie, outwardly keeping
calm but on the inside I was growing seriously worried because I could see that
Kenny had his mind made up. I knew I didn’t want to do it, but I also knew that
no matter what, I would always stand by him. He was the only family I had left
and he had always done the right thing by me.

I asked him if the woman was wealthy.

The husband’s loaded, Kenny replied,
chewing furiously.

How do you know?

Kenny frowned. I knew he was displeased
that I had the nerve to question him, but I was too anxious to think clearly.

They’re worth a bundle, that’s all you
need to know, Kenny eventually mumbled, making a sudden movement towards me.
Thinking a cuff was coming, I ducked, and when Kenny saw me ducking, he
laughed. He had only wanted a toothpick. I scurried off to get one. While Kenny
picked his teeth, I opened the box of wine and then we sat around talking.
Kenny was in good humor. Several times he playfully tweaked my ear, saying that
I was an ugly bastard but even so he was going to make me rich, and I should
stop worrying about not having a girlfriend.

I didn’t say a word. I never liked to
talk about that. Kenny, however, mentioned it every time he brought a girl
home, so a long time ago I developed a strategy, which was to turn a deaf ear.
Usually Kenny never noticed my discomfort, and the night he came up with the
plan was no exception. Ignoring my pensive mood, he offered to play cards with
me and left me some of the cheesecake, and even though things did not progress
like we planned, I remember that night fondly.

Chapter
2

Kenny spent a week checking it out. He
told me he wanted to make sure everything went smoothly because there was our
future at stake. I knew he meant it because Kenny was determined we wouldn’t
end up in jail like our dads, whom he hated and blamed for everything bad
that’s ever happened to us. Consequently, we preferred not to talk about them.
The most we ever said was when their obituaries arrived.

There goes a stupid fuck, Kenny said,
squinting at the notice announcing my father’s death. Heart failure, the note
said, alleging a quick and merciful expiry. Kenny, although pleased with the
end result, was somewhat disappointed. He would have preferred more pain, some
drawn out illness requiring torturous treatment accompanied by slow,
unstoppable deterioration of the senses; in short, he would have liked father
to suffer.

To cheer him up, I ventured an opinion.

Yeah, a stupid f–f–fuck, I repeated,
feeling a curious mixture of relief and regret. Having uttered the word that
Kenny had forbidden me to use, I regretted the breach of conduct; nevertheless,
I felt the occasion permitted such a lapse. Kenny must have sensed how I felt
because he didn’t say a word, just raised his eyebrow and slapped me on the
back in a gesture of well done. Still, I knew this was a special treat.
Normally, I wouldn’t have dared to swear simply because Kenny couldn’t stand it
when I got bogged down in the stutter; what with it being so bad it was ever
present, even in my thoughts. Anyway, I didn’t blame Kenny for getting irate; I
myself knew that swearing did not agree with me. No matter how hard I tried,
everything always came out wrong so one day Kenny banged down his fist and laid
down the law, and I was forbidden to ever swear.

At any rate, I got away with it when
our dads died. It was uncanny how they pegged out within days of each other,
uncanny because they had never had anything to do with each other, or us for
that matter, having left our mother before her pregnancies became known even to
her. Sure, they came to visit mum from time to time after we were born, but it
was mostly to get a good feed or to lie low. They certainly didn’t bother with
us; we were good enough to fetch beer but that was about it. That and a kick up
the backside was as close to fatherly affection as we ever got.

When, a couple of days later, another
obituary arrived, we were stunned. It wasn’t so much the news this time; it was
the timing, the apparently coincidental nature of our dads’ deaths coming so
close one after the other that had us perplexed. Kenny was the first one to
recover his spirits.

There goes the other stupid fuck, Kenny
guffawed, squinting closely at the paper to find out the details of his dad’s
passing. It appeared the poor sod had died in mysterious circumstances in the
communal latrines when a knife had been plunged into his belly while he was
doing business. Kenny found it a fitting end.

Indeed, I cautiously agreed, wisely
resisting the temptation to swear, being certain it wouldn’t be tolerated a
second time. But I was wrong. Kenny felt the occasion deserved to be properly
commemorated and pegged the notice to his favorite tree. Then he climbed into
the hammock and rocked to and fro, cackling quietly to himself.

Eventually Kenny put both notices in my
cookbook, so that I could have our dads’ bad example on my mind. Indeed, as he
made me cook all the time, our dads were never too far from my thoughts.

By all accounts, our dads had been
losers. Perpetually incarcerated for offenses too pathetic to recount, our dads
were the joke of the underworld, perceived as dumb, hapless bunglers given to
haphazard executions of opportunistic crimes. This lack of respect weighed
heavily upon Kenny, who vowed never to follow in their footsteps.

It’s all in the planning, he declared
to me passionately whenever he was drunk, and I never for one second doubted
his good intentions. I knew that he desperately wanted to be a hero, a champion
of the poor, a real man capable of pulling off the most ambitious, grandest
scheme. Yes, my Kenny dreamed of infamy on a large scale, desiring to come up
with a tremendous plan, something really special, so utterly monumental, that
it would make people’s eyeballs spin. Of course, up to now I had fully
supported his dream, thinking it would always be just that. I truly never
thought we’d get involved in a kidnapping.

Our fathers’ deaths had put Kenny in a
peculiar mood. It was as if he had realized that time was of the essence and if
he didn’t act soon, nothing would ever happen. He brooded, full of nervous
energy, one minute pacing up and down the room, and the next lying in the
hammock, staring into space. This went on for weeks and I worried about him,
not knowing how to help, until the day he told me about the plan. As soon as he
told me I got that hopeless feeling, the sense of foreboding that I always
carried within me intensified, and I knew we were heading for disaster.
However, I also realized that resistance would be futile; the wheels were in
motion and there was nothing I could do to stop them, so I resigned myself to
my fate.

It took him a week of surveillance to
decide what the next step would be. Apparently, the woman, our intended victim,
lived a predictable life full of routine tasks. A regular housewife, she went
out to shop, visit the library and the gym; at home, she spent her time in the
garden. The husband was hardly ever there, working at his pool shop or going
off on business. There were no children and no neighbors; in fact, the whole
thing was set up so beautifully, Kenny was convinced the kidnap was meant to
be.

The following Sunday, right after I
served the cheesecake, Kenny announced that he was ready for action.

The husband’s away, Kenny grinned into
my face, tapping his watch. She’ll be getting home from yoga just about now.

For a moment, I could not think and I
swear my knees were buckling under me. I never really thought … ahh … I kinda
hoped … Christ …

Seeing the look on my face, Kenny
laughed and blew his nose into the butcher paper. Then he scrunched the whole
thing into a ball and threw it at me, saying, here, have a swig, you little
turd, and then he forced me to drink out of his bottle. The rum burned my
throat but didn’t stop my knees shaking.

We got in the truck. Straightaway I saw
that Kenny wasn’t joking. He showed me a length of rope, a reel of cello tape,
and a ski capto pull over her eyes. He also
had a rag to stuff in her mouth. I felt sick to my stomach at the sight of it.
It was the same rag he used to clean out the exhaust pipe. Nevertheless, we set
out directly after Kenny found the cricket bat he planned to show in case she
had any funny ideas.

Down the mountain we went. Below us the
town slumbered; even at this hour there was hardly a light to be seen. Indeed,
it seemed to me we were the only people alive and I wondered what the world
would be like if we were the only ones left. Plunged into these pleasant
thoughts I drove, carefully spiraling through the darkness. It wasn’t until we
were near our destination that it suddenly occurred to me that we never made
any preparations for her stay. I slowed down.

Where are we going to put her? I asked
Kenny, catching him unawares.

What? He mumbled, contracting his
eyebrow as if he did not understand what I was saying. I swerved to pull over,
but Kenny grabbed the wheel, making me stay on the road. I drove on. From time
to time, I glanced at him but he stared straight ahead without saying a word.

She’ll stay in your room, Kenny
eventually replied. The way he looked at me clearly showed that he was dead
serious so I resigned myself to having her in my room.

When the house came into view, Kenny
made me turn off the lights. We parked the truck close to the fence. It was a
good thing, Kenny pointed out when he was taking off his shoes, that there was
a lot of front yard because she wouldn’t have heard. Keeping close to the
ground, we sneaked up to the house undetected. For a moment we stood stock
still, hidden under the thick branches of an enormous oak, looking at the house
and listening for signs of life from within.

Everything was quiet. The house, a
two-story brick building built in the old federation style, loomed over me like
a dark cavernous fortress, a forbidding sight indeed, with all the doors and
windows shut and not a streak of light anywhere. Looking at it, I remembered
the windows being open and the white curtains flapping in the wind as I went
past the gate on my bike, back in the days when I had my paper run. I
remembered admiring the house, so white and neat and proper, and how I had
wondered who lived there, and sometimes I even stopped at the gate, hoping I
would see them. I remembered how different the house looked to me then; how, on
warm summer days, the drapes in the bay window were drawn back and music,
strings and piano, wafted across the lawn all the way down to the gate. Then
one day I discovered they had hung a wicker rocking chair from the roof on the
front porch, but I never saw anybody sit in it, except once a big blue cat lay
on the tartan cushion they had there. Another time the cat had stretched out on
the wide front steps which lead down from the porch to the gravel driveway, and
yet another day I saw it under the railing next to the flower pots full of
brightly colored flowers. I am not a flower person so I never knew their names,
but the flowers were big and pretty. Looking at the house now, I remembered how
I used to wish that I lived there, and I began to wonder what would happen if I
told Kenny I didn’t want to do this anymore. I turned to speak to him but he
didn’t give me a chance.

Here, hold this, Kenny whispered as he
thrust the rope, the tape, the rag and the hat at me, and I caught everything
except for the tape. It fell onto the pavers and made an eency-weency sound. Of
course, Kenny automatically cuffed me but remained silent as he crouched to
retrieve the tape.

Huddling close, we inched towards the
back door, which, Kenny had observed during his stakeout, was never locked
until the occupants went to bed. Carefully, quiet as a mouse, Kenny tried the
handle. As expected, the door opened and we peered inside into a rather large
hallway with an old-fashioned wooden staircase leading to the first floor.
Behind the stairs on the right were two sets of doors illuminated by a stained
glass lantern mounted on the wall in between them. On the left side of the
hallway another door, half-opened, revealed a kitchen bench. The hallway floor
was carpeted and there were lots of pictures on the walls; however, it was too
dark to see details. The house was quiet except for a low, indistinct sound,
like that of a television humming, coming from somewhere upstairs.

We stood in the entrance for a second or
two and then Kenny stepped inside, motioning for me to follow. As I tiptoed
towards the staircase, Kenny placed his shoes on top of everything I held in my
arms and very, very quietly closed the door behind me, and then we got such a
fright when a cat appeared at the top of the stairs. Looking straight at us,
the cat meowed. I froze. Kenny, too, stood there gob-smacked; it was only when
we heard the voice of our intended victim that we were able to move, bolting to
the kitchen.

Kleopatra? The woman called from
upstairs. In my mind’s eye, I saw her leaning over the banister. Kleopatra?
Where are you, my love? The woman called, her voice growing stronger with every
syllable. I knew then that she was coming down the stairs because the wood
creaked under her weight.

In the kitchen, we stood waiting flush
against the wall. Kenny’s head was right next to the doorknob. I stood behind
him, feeling such tension I was certain I was going to faint, and, as the
moments ticked by and the tension mounted, I began to pray. I didn’t get far.
The woman stepped over the threshold and then everything happened all at once.

Quick as a flash, Kenny pounced on her.
He hit her on the head with the bat and she went down like a sack of potatoes.
As she lay in the doorway, the hallway light showed her features, and it didn’t
look like she was pretty, but Kenny had already stuffed the rag into her mouth
so I wasn’t able to tell because her cheeks were bulging. Besides, her hair was
all messed up, obscuring her face, and Kenny too was in the way, bending down
to fasten the tape over her mouth. That done, he pulled the hat over her face.

The rope! The rope, you turd! Kenny
hissed up at me and it was then this weird feeling first came over me. In my
hands, the rope changed into a serpent. Swaying majestically from side to side
it slowly rose, its diamond-patterned skin glistening, and its red, glowing eyes
flashing like giant headlights. All of a sudden, its tongue darted out, hitting
Kenny on the neck. Wake up, turd! Kenny shouted from the floor and the vision
dissipated like a puff of smoke. I handed him the rope. I was reeling; I think
I helped Kenny tie her hands and feet.

Finally, we were out of the house. It
was a good thing, I thought, that the woman lived on acreage because we didn’t
have to worry about neighbors. Still, as we carried her to the truck, Kenny
sweated profusely. Even though she was only a slight little thing, Kenny
worried about leaving footprints. I pointed out that gravel didn’t show them.

You’d know, wouldnya? Kenny rolled his
eyes, saying that these days there were all sorts of technological thingamajigs
and whatnots to find evidence. It might be better, Kenny thought, if we walked
on the grass where nobody would be able to trace us. We sidestepped onto the
lawn. Immediately I got bogged down where there was neither grass nor gravel
but a flower bed, and when I told Kenny, he swore at me but, as he had his
hands full, he couldn’t cuff me. Still, purely on reflex, I dropped her feet.
Kenny then really swore, and I had to move fast to grab her, and then we jumped
back onto the driveway. We just managed to get to the truck when the woman
moved.

She twitched her head, making a little
gagging sound in her throat. Quick as lightning, Kenny threw her onto the back
seat and we shot out of there. I drove. Kenny was halfway out of his seat,
hanging over her, and he had the bat ready in case she had any funny ideas.
However, she appeared unconscious. The poor thing bounced from side to side
like a rag doll because I was forced to swerve constantly to avoid the potholes
that pitted the back road we took. I would have slowed down but Kenny urged me
to speed, thinking we might have been followed. We roared through the night
like a fighter jet. Again, I had the strangest feeling. It was as if I weren’t
my own self, as if somebody else had jumped into my skin.

When we reached the highway, Kenny
finally relaxed. Confident we were past danger, he began to enjoy the
adventure, cackling and slapping his thighs and my shoulder. Then he decided to
open a new bottle of rum. He drank and joked, and all the way up the mountain
he never stopped smiling.

I pulled up at the porch. Hollering you hoo, Kenny jumped out of the truck
and threw the now empty bottle into the bushes where it crashed with the other
bottles that were already there. Then he did a crazy dance around the truck,
shouting repeatedly that we were going to be rich.

Reveling in his high spirits, Kenny
bucked like a randy buffalo. Seeing him so happy, I relaxed a little, knowing
that we were safe in the woods. Although I shared his hopes, I didn’t holler or
throw bottles. I just stood there waiting to see what would happen next.

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